Update: Added official statement from Ford.

Ford Motor Company is briefly shutting down production of the Ford Mustang at the car’s Flat Rock, Michigan, factory in a quest to avoid ballooning inventory ahead of the winter months, Bloomberg reports.

Year-over-year, U.S. sales of the Ford Mustang tumbled 32 percent in September 2016 in response to rapidly elevating incentives on the Chevrolet Camaro. As the Camaro outsold the Mustang for the first time since October 2014, Mustang sales fell to a 23-month low, causing inventory at the end of September 2016 to rise to an 89-day supply, up from 71 days of supply one month earlier.

The temporary idling at Ford’s Flat Rock facility will allow Ford to bring U.S. Mustang inventory down to more appropriate levels. 60 days of inventory is considered normal.  Read More >

“The first-generation CUE didn’t even meet our own expectations.”
Johan de Nysschen, Cadillac President — Motor Trend Interview — October 10, 2016

What was Cadillac’s boss trying to say? It all depends on where you put the emphasis. Read More >

Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer, Matthias Müller, had no prior knowledge of his company’s diesel cheating emission software, reports German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

Jones Day, the law firm investigating the diesel scandal, has concluded the replacement CEO found out about the scandal on September 18, 2015, one week before taking over at VW and the very same day that U.S. regulators revealed to the rest of the world that Volkswagen pulled a fast one on the Environmental Protection Agency.

Read More >

A large-scale culling of Cadillac dealers won’t come to pass, but that doesn’t mean franchise owners are giddy about joining the automaker’s controversial Project Pinnacle.

An overwhelming majority of the brand’s 925 U.S. dealers have opted to sign on to the program, ignoring company president Johan de Nysschen’s last-minute buyout offer to 400 low-volume locations. Read More >

Transitioning from one model to the next isn’t always a straightforward task for automakers. Forecasting and assembling the outgoing model before retooling for the incoming model is not an exact science.

For the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica, Chrysler’s replacement for the Town & Country minivan, the task was not made any easier by the presence of a value-oriented competing model inside Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ own fold. Through the first three-quarters of 2016, the Dodge Grand Caravan has set a pace that may end with the best calendar year of sales since 2012, if not 2007.

The Grand Caravan’s position atop the minivan leaderboard and the large number of Chrysler Town & Countrys that needed to be cleared out created uninspiring Pacifica sales numbers for the first few months of its life-cycle.

But Pacifica sales last month were 23-percent higher than in August, and the Chrysler Pacifica very nearly became America’s best-selling minivan in September 2016.

Only a matter of time? Read More >

Carlos Ghosn, the synergizing executive that Sergio Marchionne only wishes he could be, isn’t mincing words when it comes to Nissan’s plans for fledgling automaker Mitsubishi.

According to the Renault-Nissan top boss, the deal between Nissan and Mitsubishi is “massive.”

Read More >

Canada, as the New York Times helpfully points out, actually celebrates Thanksgiving (!), but bargaining teams from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and autoworkers union Unifor won’t get to enjoy it.

The two groups are expected to bargain down to the last minute as contract talks approach Monday night’s strike deadline, the Windsor Star reports. Unlike recent bargaining between Unifor and General Motors, the FCA negotiations have been whisper quiet, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t action happening behind the scenes. Read More >

It’s a sad day in Australia as Ford Motor Company closes the door on 91 years of domestic vehicle production.

Some 600 Ford employees are now out of work after the automaker shut down factories in Melbourne and Geelong. This marks not just the end of Australian Ford production, but the death of a long-running nameplate. Read More >

The long journey back from the economic damage wrought by the diesel emissions scandal is taking Volkswagen down new roads.

In a bid to boost the profitability of its remaining non-diesel lineup, the automaker will introduce a wholly new model aimed at the premium car crowd, Bloomberg reports. Read More >

At the beginning of each and every month, automakers release complete U.S. sales results for nearly every make and model. Sometimes the numbers are spectacular. Other times, surprising. Sometimes they’re just downright silly; nonsensical even. More often than not, the interesting tidbits are subtle.

Spectacular, surprising, silly, and subtle they may be, but not all such data points are worthy of a story. So we’ve plucked out a handful of results and statistics that are worthy of some attention from September 2016, a month in which new vehicle sales slid slightly less than 1 percent.

Ford sells a lot of F-Series pickups, the Toyota Camry is still America’s best-selling car, Americans are buying more SUVs/crossovers than cars. But auto sales figures are more interesting behind the headlines. Read More >

Seemingly in response to a story we published on TTAC last month on the subject of the Ford F-Series’ otherworldly dominance north of the border, Ford Canada reported yet another all-time monthly F-Series sales record in September 2016.

And as if outselling its two top rivals — combined — through the first two-thirds of 2016 wasn’t enough to clarify the degree of dominance exerted by the F-Series in Canada, the F-Series outsold the second, third, and fourth-best-selling pickup trucks — combined — in September 2016.

And the numbers get even crazier. Read More >

The Jeep brand can seemingly do no wrong, at least on its balance sheet, but are consumers ready to shell out six figures for a top-flight SUV with a seven-slot grille?

That’s the price range Jeep plans to probe with its upcoming Grand Wagoneer, the uppermost of two luxury vehicles designed to slot above the Grand Cherokee, Auto Express reports. Read More >

A figure of Greek mythology with very strong back muscles will find his name plastered on Volkswagen’s upcoming three-row crossover.

According to Automobilwoche, German affiliate of Automotive News, Volkswagen has decided to name their high-hopes, Chattanooga-built model the Atlas. Read More >

For just the second time in 205 months, the Ram P/U range outsold the Chevrolet Silverado in the United States in September 2016.

It’s a victory wiped away by including GM’s other full-size pickup truck, the GMC Sierra, not to mention both Ram and Silverado are fighting for second place. The Ford F-Series is America’s top-selling truck line, outselling the Ram by 20,000 units and the GM twins by nearly 4,400 sales.

September was nevertheless the icing on the cake for a three-quarter period in which Ram’s pickups finished 27,549 sales ahead of their record-setting pace last year.

But Fiat Chrysler Automobiles placed a lot of extra cash on the hood to put so much icing on the cake.  Read More >

Brock Yates wore many hats during his enviable madcap life, and each one blew off as he pinned the accelerator to the firewall.

The longtime Car & Driver editor, racecar driver, brief TTAC contributor, author, restaurateur, television commentator, screenwriter, Cannonball Run founder and fierce critic of government regulations packed a burning passion for cars into every strand of his DNA.

Yates passed away yesterday from complications of Alzheimer’s. He was 82. Read More >